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Valkyrie Gaming Learn to Play Stream Schedule

We are less than a week from our first session on the Valkyrie Gaming Learn to Play Stream! I am a little excited, a little nervous, but eager and ready for this! Well, until I remember that I’m forgetting something!

Our first lineup of players is pretty much filled out, but I need to start getting the future games populated. Below is the list of games, and dates that they will be played on, followed by a link to an application form to apply to be a player on future games!

Unless otherwise stated, all start times for the players will be at 12 Noon PST (GMT-7)

Game list & schedule

This is our current line up, and more games will be added as each game finishes up. See this post: https://foxfyrestudios.com/valkyrie-gaming-ttrpg-stream-announcement/ for a list of possible games.

If you are interested in applying for the Valkyrie Gaming Learn to Play – use this google form! https://forms.gle/rCVh8JhEv4yN6SMUA .

*Only those applications selected will be contacted.

Our first game is this weekend, Saturday April 18th at 1PM PST (GMT-7). We will be airing live on twitch and I will pray to which ever gods necessary that we don’t suffer too many technical difficulties! The Game is Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition, so at least we have quite a few gods to choose from!

Valkyrie Gaming TTRPG Stream Announcement

Announcement Video

Yesterday (April 4th 2020) I finally made the announcement for a project I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time.

A Learn to Play tabletop roleplaying games stream.

There are many Actual Play streams out there that focus on the stories told by the players and GM which touch on the rules, but I want to offer something slightly more unique, and with the goal of being a tad more accessible!

You can watch the video here! The Announcement Stream!

What is it EXACTLY?

It is a streamed game which will attempt to teach a new TTRPG every 2 weeks. The crew will be the GM and some players, most of which will never have played the game before in either role. Until I can come up with a catchy name for it, let’s call it the Valkyrie Gaming Learn to Play Stream. The initial plan for the stream is to have a game broken down into a few sections over the course of 2 sessions. The sections that we will cover will be as follows:

  • Setting Review
  • System Review
  • Character Creation
  • Adventure

Setting

First we will go through the setting and break it down into a general overview of the setting and theme. We will go over the setting in two parts, first, the overall setting, which will be brief. Then followed by how it pertains to the player characters. There is no point giving the players a huge lore dive on session 1 if their characters are peasants and will – probably – never come into contact with the country rulers.

Theme will come next – though upon writing this, it may come first. This will give a basic sense of what the game is about. Whether it is a horror game, fantasy, sci-fi, etc.

System

The system of a TTRPG is a framework that the rules follow. We will look at what the resolution system is. The Majority of games use dice, some use cards, a coin, or even a Yes or No. We will discuss how roles are done in tests, extended tests, opposed tests. Then finish off with special systems or quirks of the system, like meta-currencies.

Character Creation

Depending on how long character creation takes will depend on how we handle it. If creation takes a lengthy amount of time, we will address it off stream, and then review the process on stream. If creation is short, we will deal with it on stream. One option I have been thinking about is to have a Discord channel set up where the GM and players can discuss creation and others can watch the process. But that can come later.

Some aspects of creation we will look it is whether its through rolls, or attribute selection. How the characters are fleshed out with, skills, talents, life path generation, and any other features of the game will be reviewed.

Onward, to adventure!

Finally, we will be running a starter adventure. These will be published adventures where possible, and will be used to introduce the system. We will start slowly, walking through the required rolls when they come up. and then on session 2, starting to move a but quicker an deeper into the rules.

What about the GM?

For many(most) of the games that we will play, it will be the first time for me to GM them as well. I will have around 2 weeks to prep, so we are all learning this together!

Let’s play some games!

I have a list of what I would like to run, and would love some feedback and other games you would be interested in seeing run.

These are the first five, probably in this order, but that may change:

These are some other games I would like to approach

I will also look at games which are targeted towards younger audiences.

So you’re saying, “I want to play too!”

Fantastic! I will need people who want to learn to play these games. If you can commit to 2 – 2 to 3 hour games on consecutive Saturdays, have a decent microphone and web cam and want to learn to play, send me a message! The best place to do that would be either on twitter @foxfyre22 or on discord “FoxFyre#2204”. If you have any questions, feel free to message me or leave a comment here!

Confessions of a TTRPG’r

The following post is what started me on the idea of writing a blog about my gaming shenanigans. It was intended to be my first post, but I thought a ‘Who am I’ was a better choice.

It was a pleasant fall afternoon…

Then I became “that person”, and it’s haunted me ever since.

The following events took place in October at IntrigueCon, our local TTRPG convention in Edmonton. It was my last game of the Con, which started sometime on Sunday morning. This specific game was Dark Heresy 2nd Edition I think? It may have been 1st, I’m not certain. While I play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and GM’d it on day 2 of the convention, this was my first time playing a Warhammer 40k TTRPG. Which to me is surprising because I am HUGE into Warhammer 40k – I even have a tattoo!

The table was loaded, and my 4 companions and I were ready to get going. We chose our characters from the pre-gens that our GM had ready for us. I can’t remember the exact specifications of my character, only that I was essentially the “face” of the group. And I had a hand flamer!!! We had a psyker, a mechanicum adept, an Arbites, and a… sniper I think.

I feel I need to mention that this was my first time playing at a gaming con, and the 2 previous games I played on the day before were Dungeon Crawl Classics and Delta Green. Both different games with different players. Delta Green was the highlight of my time as a player during the Con. To add to this, 2 of my 3 GM’s during the con were women – Delta Green & Dark Heresy.


In the grim darkness of the far future…

I struggled to play the game I signed up for, and it was no one else’s fault but my own.

I consider myself spoiled when it comes to my gaming groups. Being that most of my games are on the internet for people to find and watch, we played our characters pretty seriously. We didn’t have time for much table talk being a live show and weren’t prone to going on joking sprees. At this specific game at the con, that was not the case, and I wasn’t prepared for it.

By the throne, the toaster jokes!

Let me clarify that when I say I consider myself spoiled, I mean that all my groups have been great to me. (Shout out to Liam, Sean, Luke and Ryan, my Symbaroum and Scum & Villainy when we added Drake, crew!)

They didn’t fail me, I failed them

When I had a hard time getting into the game, by not being able to play my character as I felt she needed to be played, – seriously, let the charismatic character do the talking – I shut down. I spent the majority of the game on my phone talking on discord. I was still paying attention, I just wasn’t engaged. When it came time to go into combat, you better believe I used my flamer! I got ALL OF THE KILLS in the game, so there was that.

I feel guilty about how I conducted myself in that game, and I am determined to do better in the future. My take away from that experience is that I need to not be so series all the time in public situations, and if the table is getting silly, go with it! I’m not sure if my fellow players noticed me being weird, but if they see this, I would like them to see it as an apology.

Every story has an ending

Now, closer to the end of the game, I got back into it. We were moving down a walkway towards a landing pad, where we were to wait for a lander to land. Well, the lander was coming down, then it exploded. Something about a bunch of psykers and a daemonhost on board. Lander blew up, we now had an uncontrolled daemonhost on the loose. Most of us got into strategic positions. The sniper did his job rather well, took the enemy down critically, and then the psyker and I got impaled by some spike from the daemonhosts body, the psyker in the front, me in the back.

My turn comes up, I’m impaled, my psyker friend is also impaled in front of me and essentially blocking the enemy from view. I don’t recall the specific mechanic, but I had a fate point or something to burn. In an attempt to burn the baddie, I ran a plan by the GM. I want to burn through the psyker – with his permission of course – to let the flames get at the enemy. She agreed to this, but on one condition; I die in the process. And die I did! I burnt through the psyker, killed the enemy, but the heat from the fire was enough to make the promethium canister on the hand flamer explode, taking me out!
That is my previous con guilt. I’ve learned from it, I will try to read the table a bit better, and just go with the game.

That is my previous con guilt. I’ve learned from it, I will try to read the table a bit better, and just go with the game.

Games are for everyone, and we are all here to have fun!

Meet Charlotte (Foxfyre)

Well, this is it! After months of humming and hawing over creating my own, hopefully, regular, blog here we are! At this point, the primary topic of the blog posts will be about my adventures in Tabletop Roleplaying, and whatever that may mean at the time of each post.

Who am I?

Let’s start with a little bit about who I am for those who may not be familiar with me.

My name is Charlotte, and I am a TTRPG’er!

During a busy 2019, I started off being a player for Matt Kay on Fear and Loathing in the Third horizon, a Coriolis Actual Play Podcast from Mud & Blood Podcast. From there I went over to streaming an actual play game on Encounter Roleplay where we played Symbaroum, which was GM’d by one of the hosts of Mud & Blood, Liam Stevens. That campaign was the first time I had the opportunity to play Symbaroum, but it will be one of my more memorable gaming experiences. If you’re interested in checking it out, here is the playlist on YouTube, Symbaroum Playlist. 14 episodes took us to the end of that campaign, and from there, we dove into Scum & Villainy, a Blades in the Dark game.

During the seasons where we switched to Scum & Villainy, I was also GM’ing a campaign of Conan, an age undreamed of! That was one of my first experiences being a game master for a campaign, on top of stream GM’ing. During that time I was also a guest on some showcase games on Encounter Roleplay like Nibiru, Children of the Beast, and Zafir. Some of the games were on Kickstarter while we were showcasing them.

In the second half of 2019, things slowed down a bit regarding my stream games. We did, however, start a new actual play podcast with Mud & Blood, this time, Kult: Divinity Lost!

Discord!

One thing that remained a constant while all of that gaming was going on was my dedication to a few Discord servers that I manage. I like to spend my time creating and managing spaces for fellow TTRPGamers, where they can come together and discuss their favourite hobbies, games, characters, or ask questions to help clarify the rules. Some of these servers include:

  • The Rat Catchers Guild – Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay all Editions by Cubicle 7 – Invite
  • Age of Soulbound – Age of Sigmar: Soulbound by Cubicle 7 – Invite
  • Wrath & Glory – The only server I don’t have a clever name for, by Cubicle 7 – Invite
  • Green Ronin Age Appropriate Discord Server – An all in one stop for all of Green Ronin Games – Invite

IntrigueCon

A highlight of last year was in October which seen me attending my first RPG convention – IntrigueCon. It is a local convention for Tabletop Roleplay Gaming which spans 3 days. During those three days we jammed in 5 games, which made for a long, but fun weekend! Over the weekend I ran 2 games, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition, and The Expanse. I also had the opportunity to play in 3 games, Dark Heresy, Delta Green, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It was one of these games that will be the topic for my next post.

Awards

During the convention, we took a bit of a break between games 3 and 4. Here in Alberta, we have a healthy gaming community. One of the people in our community put together an award a few years back. The Alberta Roleplaying Game Award. For my contributions to our gaming community in Alberta, I was the recipient of the 2019 award! In addition to all of the other Discords I manage, I am also the creator of the Alberta Tabletop Games Discord server. We started as a TTRPG server for Edmonton, but grew to encompass all tabletop gaming across the province!

All for now

Last year was busy, and this was just my gaming stuff! I also had a wedding and a honeymoon too!

This post was originally going to be much different, but I figured a who am I was in order first.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment, or to track me down on Discord or Twitter @foxfyre22!